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[Shawn Dorward]

During an Ask The All Star webinar today, we discussed some cool things we would like to see added to GP.  Aside from being able to print money (haha) we all agreed that a integrated search function would be awesome!  If you are not familiar with how this works in CRM, 365, NAV, etc, it’s basically one box that you type into and then related results get returned.  In the attached ‘photoshopped’ example, you can see i was typing vendors and found related areas in the system.  Wouldn’t something like that be awesome for GP?  If you agree, visit the ms connect link below and vote for this suggested item!  Have other ideas for suggested enhancements?  Create your own on MS Connect!

https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamicssuggestions/Feedback/Details/3119651

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Shawn Dorward
Twitter: @ShawnMDorward
Implementation Consultant
InterDyn Artis
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[Spring Lackey]

Voted.  Thanks for the suggestion.  I used NetSuite while transitioning a new company and loved the search feature.  It took things a step further.  If you enter a vendor, for example, into the search bar, it would show you all items in the system for that vendor, including invoices, payments, PO’s, vendor setup, etc.

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Spring Lackey
Senior Accountant
One Technologies, LLC
Dallas TX
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[Rob Klaproth]

There is a 3rd party add-on for GP that has search, it is called:

Search Master by Precopio

https://precipioservices.com/search-master-for-microsoft-dynamics-gp-the-ultimate-dynamics-gp-search-tool/

I’ve never personally worked with it, so I can’t vouch for it, but it looks pretty powerful.

——Original Message——

Voted.  Thanks for the suggestion.  I used NetSuite while transitioning a new company and loved the search feature.  It took things a step further.  If you enter a vendor, for example, into the search bar, it would show you all items in the system for that vendor, including invoices, payments, PO’s, vendor setup, etc.

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Spring Lackey
Senior Accountant
One Technologies, LLC
Dallas TX
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[Lou Spevack]

SmartFill from Rockton and SmartView from eOne both have this kind of search functionality.

This is the Find Panel in SmartView.

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Lou Spevack
Systems Accountant | Dynamics Credentialed Professional
American Council on Education
Washington DC
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[Rob Klaproth]

Lou,

I want to clarify limitations to the products you mention.   SmartFill is context sensitive, it isn’t really designed to search the entire system from a central place, it’s designed so when you’re in the item card you can type a description of the item in the item # field and it will lookup the items automatically.   Or you can be in the vendor ID field and type in the vendor name and it will start searching vendors..

SmartView is designed as a replacement for SmartList.  It certainly does have great search functionality, but again it’s not designed to be a “full system search” functionality like the product I posted yesterday from Envisage Software, which does actually search every table (vendors, payments, invoices, items, etc) for a specific key word.

Rob

——Original Message——

SmartFill from Rockton and SmartView from eOne both have this kind of search functionality.

This is the Find Panel in SmartView.

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Lou Spevack
Systems Accountant | Dynamics Credentialed Professional
American Council on Education
Washington DC
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[Andrew Dean]

As mentioned by Rob, Envisage Software Solutions, in collaboration with Steve Endow of Precipio Services, developed a full GP search solution identical to the functionality that is available in NetSuite. Users could type in a search term ie ‘travel’ and the tool would search all Dynamics GP records for that term. Users could search for names, items, phone numbers, transaction amounts, etc. Think of it like google inside of GP looking for any piece of information that is present in the database.  The solution searched fully indexed data and did not query the database directly.  Search results were displayed instantly in a window and then once selected, the associated GP window could be opened and populated with information.

Here is a video demo of the product:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb2d5jMcAsc

Having developed this product, I can share some of the things we learned.

1. We found minimal “commercial” interest in the product. Users may utilise the functionality if it were provided for free, but if asked to pay, they could not justify purchasing the product. Over the past 6 years, we had less than 20 enquiries in total. I think the reason for the lack of a commercial market is as follows. Managers can justify purchasing an AR solution that saves many hours of staff time each week but could not justify purchasing a product that reduces the search time from 20 seconds using standard methods, to 1 second using a full-text search solution.
2. When searching the entire database ( all tables and all fields) you need something faster than a SQL statement. MSSQL does provide a full-text search capability but that technology could not deliver the responsiveness required.Eventually we settled on using a dedicated open source product called SOLR as the underlining search repository engine. With this technology, search results could be displayed as fast a user could type. The product was so fast that as individual letters were typed, the results would be updated.
    
3. The solution was developed exclusively in VSTools. The SOLR engine had a C# reference library and using .NET reflection, we were able to associate the search result with any GP window and have that window open and populated when a user selected one the search result items. There is no Dexterity code used in the product.

 

At this stage, we are planning to open source the application so that others may be able to review the code, gain some deep insight into the capabilities of VSTools, and see how a large enterprise application can be developed for Dynamics GP. If you are a .NET developer and are interested in getting your hands on the code, please send me your contact details via http://envisagesoftware.com/contactus/ 

 

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Andrew Dean
Envisage Software
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